Asia, Spying | featured news

The Chinese national taken into custody on an airplane waiting to take off for home had pornography and illegally downloaded movies on his NASA computer, not government secrets, reports say. He is now set to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating NASA computer rules. A felony charge of allegedly lying to FBI agents has been resolved, reports say, but it is not immediately clear if it is being dropped outright. Reports do indicate the lying charge is not going forward.

The murder of the British businessman, Neil Heywood, is still seen as stemming from a financial dispute, but the intelligence links add an enticing subplot to his death.

The Pentagon said on Friday it believes China spent up to $180 billion on its military buildup last year, a far higher figure than acknowledged by Beijing, and it accused "Chinese actors" of being the world's biggest perpetrators of economic espionage.

A prosecutor says a Taiwanese political science professor has been detained for providing data on visiting Chinese activists to Beijing. Huang Mou-hsin says Wu Chang-yu of Central Police University was detained Friday pending filing of formal charges.

The head of a Washington nonprofit group was arrested Tuesday for allegedly running a front organization on behalf of elements of the Pakistani government, including its spy agency, for more than two decades in an effort to influence U.S. lawmakers and other top officials. Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, 62, a U.S. citizen and resident of Fairfax, was charged in federal court in Virginia with participating in a long-term conspiracy to act as an agent of the Pakistani government without disclosing his affiliation.

China hijacked 15 per cent of the world's internet traffic for 18 minutes earlier this year, including highly sensitive email exchanges between senior US government and military figures, a report to the US Congress said.

Indian police are holding a pigeon under armed guard after it was caught on an alleged spy mission for neighboring Pakistan, media reported Friday.

North Korea threatened Saturday to shoot down any Japanese planes that intrude into its airspace, accusing Tokyo of spying near one of its missile launch sites.